IMCA reports an incident involving a hydraulic oil leak to sea from downline fitting, and provides lessons learned from the case.
The incident
During decommissioning, cutting work was being conducted using a diamond wire saw. A third-party supplier’s technician noticed a sudden drop in pressure, and it was discovered that 100 litres of hydraulic oil had been released to sea.
The downline was disconnected, recovered to deck and inspected. The leak was coming from a BSP fitting 40m from the diamond wire saw connection point.
Before the incident, the system had been deployed following deployment checks using a dedicated form for hydraulic checks. The downline was in a “figure 8” on deck and subsea as per procedure and risk assessment.
